Tektronix, Inc., the world's leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes, announced that it has extended the capabilities of the analysis system on its MSO/DPO70000 Series of Digital and Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes to include modeling of on-chip silicon behavior using IBIS-AMI models and S-parameters. This significantly improves correlation between measurement and simulation for faster, more accurate characterization of on-chip silicon behavior and performance for today's mobile, enterprise, and data communication standards.

As serial data rates increase, most next generation serial technologies require measurements at the far end where the eye is completely closed. Equalization must be done to open the eye before the measurements can be taken. Until now, reference equalizers based on a mathematical model have been used for compliance testing, but these equalizers lack correlation with simulators and fail to represent complex real-world silicon behavior. In contrast, IBIS-AMI models are designed using the architecture of the actual receiver silicon.

"Accurate system characterization requires visibility into on-chip behavior," said Brian Reich, general manager, Performance Oscilloscopes, Tektronix. "Until recently, this has not been available on real-time oscilloscopes for the latest high-speed serial data specifications such as SuperSpeed USB or PCI Express 3.0. The introduction of IBIS-AMI models enables silicon vendors to model chip behavior and those models can be now used on Tektronix oscilloscopes instead of the less accurate reference equalization models.

" Support for IBIS-AMI is included as part of the Serial Data Link Analysis Visualizer (SDLA Visualizer) package that provides a complete solution for de-embedding the effects of cables, fixtures and probes for silicon validation, system verification, backplane characterization, and embedded system performance. SDLA Visualizer also supports "what-if" channel analysis through simulating transmitter equalization and S-parameter scaling, enabling designers to predict system performance without the need for a physical channel model.

A significant advantage to using IBIS-AMI models is correlation with simulation results and confidence that the resulting measurements match system behavior. "Since simulations are often done before silicon or physical board are available, correlation between the simulation and oscilloscope measurements has been an ongoing challenge for our customers," said Brian Burdick, IC Analog Validation Engineer of LSI Corporation. "With the addition of IBIS-AMI support, oscilloscopes are now able to go well beyond simple waveform acquisition to provide a better representation of silicon behavior for significant time and cost savings."